The Things He Carries
by Kyrian
Summary: The world ended far more quickly than anyone expected. Too bad he didn't end with it. (Above the Deep prequel, Charon's backstory)
A/N: Hey all! This is a prequel to 'Above the Deep', so you may want to read that first. This stands fairly well on its own, so you would probably be fine, but I think the impact will be lessened.

"Home sweet home. Damn, it's good to see America again!"

The soldier sitting next to him on the plane is hooting and slapping his buddy on the arm as they taxi down the runway towards the airport. One of them has a bandage wrapped around his shaved head and a multitude of cuts pepper across his face. They haven't paid him any mind the whole flight home. He prefers it that way.

When the plane finally stops, there's a flurry of activity as soldiers leap up from their seats and start pulling their packs down. M-4's and M-16's, no longer the only thing standing between life and death, get slung across their backs, reduced to oblong paperweights. All around him, he hears talk of going home, visiting family, hitting up the bars and drinking until the sun comes up. Soldiers are good at compartmentalizing; looking at them, you'd never guess what most of them had been facing just 72 hours ago.

Master Sergeant Schulz is waiting for him just inside the airport. Around him, platoons form up loosely to ensure everyone made it off the plane. They count off rifles, pistols, confidential gear, scopes and bodies. Everything in its place, nothing left behind.

He doesn't have a platoon. Master Sergeant Schulz returns his clipped, polite greeting and turns to go, expecting him to follow.

Sergeant Christopher Szalinski adjusts the strap of his pack and does just that.

"I read your report, Sergeant Szalinski. Seems everything went off without a hitch. Anything to add?" Colonel Williams asks. Her craggy face has trouble holding the tone of concern and interest that she's attempting to project. He wishes she'd lay the fuck off. At some point in his career he would have been mildly uncomfortable reporting directly to a colonel, but those days are long since over. Now it's conversations with soldiers of his own rank that are rare. He can't remember the last time he'd said even two words besides 'Good morning' to a private first class.

"No, ma'am. It went smoother than we anticipated." He says, staring blankly ahead. His fingers twitch to pick at a stray thread on his trousers, but he stills the urge. "First Sergeant Capowski was right in saying the Chinese didn't expect the extent of our intelligence. They've been attempting to get access into the closed network, but they haven't been successful. They never saw us coming."

The colonel sits back in her chair and steeples her fingers. Her nails just barely reach past the ends of her fingers; firmly within regulation, but they still remind him of talons, for some reason. Her office has the same affectation of friendliness and professionalism that she does. It probably works on most soldiers. Unfortunately for her, not much works on him these days.

"Good. Your leave has been approved. You've already bought your plane ticket?" A nod. "You have a temporary room in Barracks 13417, one building over. Talk to the soldier on duty, he'll get you the key. Dismissed, Sergeant. Keep up the good work."

Szalinski stands, salutes. He leaves without any more ceremony.

The room is small and bare, as temporary rooms usually are. The soldier on duty has given him a set of linens to use; there's an old, faded pillow already laying on the twin bed. He unpacks a set of civilian clothes from his seabag and drapes them over a chair to air out, then carefully undresses out of his inspection uniform and hangs it up.

"Hey fuckers, are you gonna be in there all night?" someone yells in the hallway. It's just hit late afternoon. If he looks out his window, he can see a group of men and women playing volleyball in one of the sand pits. They've got cases of beer and bags of chips piled up on a park bench. He smiles faintly as a girl in a tank top and cut-off shorts spikes the volleyball over the net and scores the winning point for her team.

The base will be alive tonight with people going out on the town. Friday and Saturday nights on a military base are a site to see. Especially with Halloween only a week away, he suspects several soldiers will be brought in by the military police, drunk and wearing costumes and trying to explain why they were scaling the side of a building at 3 AM.

He thinks about going to the chow hall to get dinner, or running to the exchange for a six pack, but it feels like too much work to get up once he's already sat down on his bed. It's not particularly comfortable, but his body feels heavy from the flight and the debrief and everything that led up to those besides.

At least tomorrow he's going home. Home to dusty San Angelo, to the hot sun and the rolling fields and farm hands flying down dirt roads in their beat-up old trucks. His mom promised to bake him an apple pie, and his dad will shake his hand and then pull him into a hug. He'll smell like oil and sweat. His brother will probably be at work still, but the minute he gets off shift he'll come over and badger him about what he's been doing since they last saw each other. He wishes Linda could have gotten some time off. The last time they'd spoken she'd just twisted her mouth and said cryptically that she couldn't get her leave approved.

Well, he's not slated to deploy again for at least a few months. So they have time. It's not like she's far away.

Evening finds him stretched out along the bed in PT shorts and an old, faded t-shirt. He thumbs a faded burn scar on his thigh and stares at the ceiling. The last few months have given him nightly practice at silencing the screaming memories in his head. While the echoes of laughter echo down the hallways and outside his window, he fades into sleep.

Outside, another alarm sounds, adding to the cacophony. How many fucking alarms do you need? One is all they needed to figure out something was wrong - the rest just make it hard to hear.

"You can't stay here. You have to find somewhere safe. Get to the Oldtown Bunker on 3rd Street." He says urgently to a crying woman who's huddled in a corner, her toddler in her lap. She shakes her head tearfully at his words. Tired of arguing, he pulls her up by her arm and steers her towards the nearest exit, until she finally starts moving on her own. Televisions blare around them, each eerily in sync with the next as a dark-haired reporter inside a news station stammers out information on the fly. His hair sticks up into wild points and there's two spots of bright red in his cheeks, matching his frenzied tone of voice.

The airport is almost empty behind him. Most people had fled at the first word of the bombs; they knew instinctively that there was too much glass here, too much space. Not enough protection against nuclear fallout. No, a bunker or a vault was the place to go.

"It seems New York has been the most recent target in the string of -" the reporter from the television says as he jogs through the terminal, looking for any last stragglers. It looks empty.

A ringing, distinct from the claxon of alarms around him, sounds. He pulls his cell phone from his pocket and presses it to his ear.

"Mom? You okay?" He asks hurriedly, struggling to hear her over the noise. She's cutting in and out and he has to slow to a walk to make out any words.

"-head - the shelter - ther. Your bro - not sure. - you seen Linda?"

He frowns. "Linda? Why would I have seen Linda?" The other end crackles again.

"She - to see you. - to surpr - not answering her phone. Christopher, please - er. Please."

Her voice is frantic. Even over the crackling of the connection, he can tell she's been crying.

A sharp ache starts in his chest. He'd been one day from seeing them. Just a short plane ride to Texas. He tries to convince himself that they'll make it, that he'll get another chance, but he's not fooling anyone. This is it. It's over. All he gets is one last, tinny phone call. He imagines her tawny hair pull up in a ponytail, the smell of vanilla and cinnamon in the kitchen. She'd always teased that he was her personal servant for fetching anything more than five feet off the ground. When he was five, his goldfish had died of some mysterious disease and she'd stayed in bed with him all day, reading stories and holding him as he sobbed.

"I'll find her. Get to the shelter as fast as you can. I - I love you, Mom. Tell Dad. And Roger."

He can't really understand what she says back, but he knows. At least he got to say it one last time. The call cuts out, and he moves on.

So Linda had come to surprise him. He hadn't thought to tell his parents he'd be heading to the airport early. With nowhere else to go once his temporary room had been taken from him, it seemed the logical option.

That means she's probably still on Fort Meade. A shitty place to be when the whole United States is suddenly under threat of nuclear bombs.

No time to waste. He sprints for the exit to the airport.

Outside, a mass of people screams and cries as cars try desperately to get down the road and somewhere safe. Several have slammed into each other and block the road. The airport security are trying to get ahold of the situation, but everyone is too far gone to listen.

He finds an abandoned motorcycle lying in the middle of the mess. Pulling it up on its wheels, he quickly moves it up onto the sidewalk and finds a clear spot to hotwire it. 650 cc's roar to life; not much, but it's small, and it'll get him where he needs to go.

He's on the road into Meade before it hits. He doesn't even have time to slow down or pull off the road. There's no outrunning a nuclear bomb.

First comes the light. It takes over the sky, bright and blinding. The earth heaves underneath him, throwing him and the bike into the air. The motorcycle is pulled from his fingers; blind and defenseless, he seems to hang in the air for a split second. Then he hits the ground hard. The air roars around him; he can feel his skin disintegrating where it scrapes against the asphalt.

He struggles, fights to stay conscious, but it's no use. He blacks out.

The nurses nearly have a heart attack when he drags himself into the shelter. His vision is still fucked up, dark and colourless, but he thinks they're wearing gas masks, because their faces look strange. They take in his useless legs, the smear of blood he leaves as he drags himself in to the shelter. As good as dead, they probably think, but they fetch a stretcher and move him carefully onto it anyway. When they lift him off the ground, he turns his head and vomits all over the floor. His head spins, the lights behind his eyes dance wildly. Maybe he passes out again, he's not sure.

They set his legs and cover the road rash all over the right side of his body with medicine-soaked cloths. He's unconscious for most of it. The whole episode is like an acid trip. His consciousness swims to the surface occasionally; the doctor doing something to his numb left leg; a nurse checking his vitals; an IV hanging from a hook, dripping something into his veins. He vaguely remembers someone trying to spoon something into his mouth, and his stomach rejecting it so hard that the vomit splattered the front of the nurse's scrubs.

When he wakes for good, it's to the understandable surprise of the medical staff. A black-haired nurse rushes over and pushes him gently back into bed as he tries to rise. He fights as hard as he can, but there's no strength in his body.

"Linda." He gasps. "W…. Lind… where."

"Talking isn't going to do you any good right now." The nurse says firmly. "You need rest. It's a miracle you're alive."

Despite the fact that he's bedridden, that his legs are both broken and he's more raw meat than person, the glare that he gives her still makes her take an involuntary step back.

"Linda Szalinski. N...need to… know." He manages. He tries to explain, but he's already said more than his raw throat can handle. He coughs weakly and stonily accepts a sip of water from the cup the nurse holds up to his lips.

"Everything's a mess right now." The woman confesses. "We don't even have a roster of who we're treating. But I'll ask around, okay? If she's here, I'll let you know. Now rest. "

He wants to protest, wishes he could get up himself and start the search, but his body doesn't respond to his will. He lays in bed, staring at the ceiling, eyelids heavy and refusing to fall back asleep. He needs to get up.

The nurse comes back a few times to let him know that she hasn't found anything, but she's still looking. He stomachs all the rations she gives him, even the baby food she resorts to when his breakfast of oatmeal doesn't stay put. A constant feeling of nausea plagues him. Even though he doesn't move from the bed, sometimes the room spins around him or he wakes up suddenly, having no memory of falling asleep.

His legs heal quickly. Too quickly. Even with all the stimpacks they apply, the medication and the antibiotics and whatever else is in the IV he's hooked up to, the bones mend themselves far faster than they should. The nurse and his doctor don't say anything to him about it, but he's had too many broken bones to not know what their careful looks mean.

And even as his body heals the road rash and the broken limbs at lightning speed, his nausea gets worse. His skin dries and flakes. It itches; scratching at it leaves red divets in the skin and lines where it cracks apart. On his leg, a whole patch just comes off. The flesh below is raw and red. The nurse and the doctor stand across the room, shooting glances at him, and whisper to each other. He knows what they're saying, even if they can't hear it.

On his fourteenth day since waking up, the nurse comes back with a little, nervous smile on her face, wringing the apron of her outfit in her hands.

"Chris?" She says softly. She's taken to calling him that. He wishes she wouldn't, but he's never said so.

"I found a woman named Linda. She's in one of the other bunkers on base, but it's connected to this one. They don't know her last name, but… well. She looks a bit like you."

His breath hitches. The nurse huffs an annoyed breath when he sits up, but she doesn't stop him from disattaching the various pieces of medical equipment from his body. Instead she takes over, slowly withdrawing the needle from his arm and wrapping it so it doesn't bleed.

"Would you submit to taking a wheelchair over there?" She asks him. When he gives her a flat look, she just ducks her head to hide her smile. He doesn't want to take the arm she offers as he struggles to stand, but he has to. Her mouth tightens at the feel of his cracked, raw skin.

They amble down the hallway together, agonizingly slow. Everyone takes a wide berth around him. He catches a glimpse of himself in a mirror. There are sores all over his body and his eyes are milky. His lips and the tip of his nose are raw; they sting if he touches them. He looks like he should be quarantined. He probably would be, if they had the space.

It takes them, at his pace, an hour to make it all the way to the next bunker. By that time, his vision is swimming and he's stopped to vomit twice. Despite the fact that his original injuries are completely healed, he feels worse than ever. But it doesn't matter. Nothing matters but finding his sister.

He knows it's her as soon as they walk through the door. He lunges for the bed, stumbles, and catches himself on the railing. The nurse hurries to drag a chair over, but he ignores her.

Linda Szalinski lays asleep in the hospital bed. Her hair, fine and lighter than his true ginger, is greasy and limp where it hangs over the pillow. She's still dressed in her cammies, though someone has removed her boots. Her face is covered with sores, just like his. She has a feeding tube inserted, plus an IV and several other medical instruments that he can't identify. A cloth tent of some sort covers her nose. He takes her hand, careful not to touch any of the raw spots, and squeezes gently.

"Linda." He gasps, throat tight. She doesn't wake. He accepts the nurse's gentle pressure to sit down in a chair and doesn't let go of her hand.

He doesn't know how long he stays. Dizzy, nearly delirious, he stumbles to the bathroom a few times to throw up, but always returns immediately. A doctor stops by to check on her and tells him what little she knows.

"They brought her in a day or so after the bombs dropped. She was passed out near one of the barracks on base. She hasn't woken up since. She's your sister?"

He nods. The doctor understands and doesn't ask anything else.

Arrangements are made for him to move into Linda's hospital room. They hook him up so that he can move about freely and sit at her bedside, mostly because they're tired of reattaching everything after he's pulled them off.

A week goes by, and he starts to find chunks of hair on his pillow. When he brushes hers out, he gets the same. The bruises and sores spread and connect all over their bodies. No amount of stimpacks or topical gels can heal them. He finally finds that the reason for the tent over Linda's nose is that she doesn't have one anymore. Where it used to be, there's just a gaping hole. He feels his own gingerly and guesses that it's going to go the same way.

Outside of his room, things degrade daily. Patients die, but it becomes too dangerous to leave to bury them; so teams of soldiers in radiation suits drive them out and dump them in mass graves. He hears that people are showing up at the bunker doors, demanding to be let in, but they're already at capacity. There's nowhere to put them, so they're left outside. He hears one of the nurses say that one morning, they'd checked the main exit and found nothing but ripped-apart bodies, as if something had found them in the night and feasted.

After a while, he realizes that he's starting to feel better. His dizziness and nausea has decreased and he can keep down most solid foods. When he probes the bumps and divets of his skin, they no longer hurt, though he looks sort of like someone forced him through a meat grinder. It gives him hope, but Linda still doesn't open her eyes.

He's six years old again, a tiny hellion in a dark blue, puffy coat and tall boots that don't in any way impede him from scrambling through the snow. Darting behind a tree, he bends down to pack snow between his mitten-covered hands and peeks out cautiously. Spying a red coat, he takes aim and chucks the snowball. Linda, 11 years old and already tall and gangly for her age, goes down with a cry of surprise. She wastes no time throwing her own snowball back at him, but he ducks back behind the tree and it thuds harmlessly on the bark.

His mom is sitting on the porch with Roger, who'd rather drink hot chocolate and laugh at his siblings than risk getting a faceful of snow. His dad is working, but as soon as he's home he'll probably come out with them and help build a snowman. He's the best at building them, because he can roll the big snowball around for the base that's too heavy for Chris or Linda. Chris hopes his mom will take a picture because the snow isn't supposed to last very long.

"Found you!" Linda shrieks from behind him, just before something cold and wet thuds into the back of his jacket. Some of it slides down under his collar and chills his back. Chris lets out a childish warcry and chases her down so he can repay the favor, but his legs are too short to catch her and so the chase ends in both of them collapsing into the snow.

"Let's make snow angels!" Chris announces excitedly. Rolling onto his back, he flails his arms and legs back and forth wildly. Snow flies in all directions. He turns his head, snow cold against his cheek, and sees Linda smiling next to him, the red of her coat bright against the snow.

When Charon wakes, something cold and rough presses against his cheek. He sits up blearily and looks at the arm that had been smooshed below his face.

Linda's eyes are still closed. Between the scabs and the missing flesh, what's left of her skin is pale, sickly white. He wraps his hand around her bicep. The skin beneath his is icy. Her chest is motionless, neither rising nor falling.

When they come to take her away, he nearly doesn't let them. He wants to throw them from the room, bar the door, do whatever it takes to keep her here. But he realizes that she's not really here anymore. She's already gone, has been for a while if he's honest with himself. So he lets them wrap the body up and wheel it out.

They kick him out of the hospital. Nobody's sure what the hell is happening to him, but since he's not dying, and he's not getting better, he doesn't belong there anymore. People avoid him in the hallways. Nobody wants to be anywhere near his ripped, raw flesh or meet his milky eyes.

He doesn't know what to do, so he reports to Colonel Williams. She looks a little different than the last time he'd seen her - cammies more wrinkled, a thick scar under one eye that wasn't there before. For once, she doesn't bother faking a smile when he strides up and reports in. The pragmatism and seriousness suit her appearance much better than the fake pleasantries. She sets him to defending the base and dismisses him.

Two months later, Colonel Williams is killed when raiders break in. It was really only a matter of time before it happened. The people outside are too desperate, and an army bunker, stocked with everything they need to survive, is too sweet a target.

One of the raiders, a middle-aged man that looks like he should be driving a soccer van instead of beating people's faces in with a spiked bat, peeks out into the hallway, retreats at the sound of gunfire, but not before he flashes a familiar stack of white paper out where the defendants on the barricade can see it.

"Charon?" He calls. The raider says it wrong, with a hard 'ch' instead of the softer 'sh' sound like it should be. Clearly not a historian, this one. "You in there? Got your contract right here. Pulled it off of that ugly woman with the messed-up face."

He's been holding the barricade as instructed, with a young corporal on the other side who's been shaking in his boots probably since the bombs dropped. He was a clerk or something, a paper-pusher. Not cut out for this type of fight.

"If you're in there, and I'm in charge of you, take care of everyone behind that barricade. Kill 'em all." The man calls from behind the corner. The familiar twinge of pain starts behind his eye. He struggles to stay where he is, but the pain only grows, until he's nearly seizing with it. Nobody knows who Charon is; they all know him as Sergeant Z, except the black-haired nurse. She's still alive back there somewhere, tending to the wounded.

"Sergeant Z? Sergeant Z, what's going on? Are you okay?" The corporal says worriedly. He just grunts in reply.

This is not how it was supposed to go. This isn't how any of it was supposed to go. He wishes the corporal would figure it out, and just lift his rifle and shoot him through the chest, but he doesn't. The stupid little shit just sits there, that worried look on his face, unaware of what's about to happen to him. To all of them.

Charon aims his shotgun and pulls the trigger.

"We took shelter at Fort Meade, where I was stationed, but I was above ground for long enough to receive a damaging dose of radiation. That is what started the ghoulification process. After that, the US military attempted to retake control, but they were too few and far between. Eventually, it collapsed, and I began working for other employers for the first time."

Gal blinks, but accepts the short answer gracefully.

It's such a gross over-simplification. Cold, short words. Charon wants to describe the way his sister's hair draped limply over her pillow as she decayed day after day, the fluid lines of his black-haired nurse as she'd cared for him. She'd been young and afraid of what was happening to him and still brave enough to talk to him, to comfort him, to touch him. He never knew her name. She'd screamed when he gunned her down, that last day in the bunker.

He'd never had a chance to search for his parents. After the first half-century, he assumed there was no point anymore.

The details fade as quickly as they'd came. His fingers twitch, desperate to write them down before they disappear, but this is not the time or place for nostalgia. His employer deserves better than he can give, but if all he has left to offer is the lead in his shotgun and his bullet sponge of a body, he'll give it.

As they move on through the wasteland, Sergeant Christopher Szalinski and his memories fade into the dust, remnants of a time and place that no longer exists and no longer matters. Charon wonders how long it will be until he joins them.

A/n: Thanks for reading! Drop me a line and let me know if you liked it or disliked it, have any concrit, etc.


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